Capitol rioters see Ashli Babbitt as a martyr — and themselves as innocent patriots

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, law enforcement officials have been engaged in the slow process of identifying and arresting the members of the mob who besieged, occupied and vandalized congressional offices. At least 50 arrests had been made by Thursday, on charges ranging from illegal entry and activity on designated ground to assaulting a federal law enforcement officer and threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The work has been made much easier, though, by the fact that the rioters made little effort to disguise themselves, posting selfies and boasting of their exploits to anyone who pointed a camera at them. “We’re storming the Capitol, it’s a revolution,” a woman who identified herself as Elizabeth from Knoxville, Tenn., told a Yahoo News reporter outside the Capitol moments after she said she was maced while trying to force her way into the building.

Considering that they face possible sentences of up to 20 years in prison, that would seem somewhat self-defeating behavior, worth an effort to explain.

And the explanation appears to be that, by and large, they don’t think they did anything wrong.

As many of them said at the time, and was obvious to anyone watching, including Pelosi, they had been sent there by President Trump, who urged them to “fight like hell” to overturn the election of President-elect Joe Biden. And having been fed a steady diet of disinformation and mythology by their online influencers, many of them seemed to believe that they were implementing Trump’s plan to overthrow the “deep state” and the traitors in Congress — which if successful would make moot any possible crimes they committed in the process, such as hanging Vice President Mike Pence.

Styling themselves as patriots, they seemed to imagine their places alongside Paul Revere and Nathan Hale in future history books — not to mention in the pantheon of right-wing saints. Within days of the riot, participants and sympathizers began an effort to turn Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon-supporting Air Force veteran who was killed in the melee, into a MAGA version of Joan of Arc, a martyr to the cause of Donald Trump.

SOURCE: The Daily Yahoo